Kitchenbath

Project by Anastasia Eggers and Philipp Kolmann as a part of the Urban Food&Design Challange at the Vienna Design Week

Wellness treatments performed with by-products of dairy making: a homage to Cleopatra’s milk bath integrated with kitchen processes in a domestic environment

Anti-covid measures cultivated new behaviours and new routines when it comes to food, but it could also cultivate new relationships – not only with our co-humans, but with other species and organisms who we cohabit with.

During the global pandemic everything is a perceived danger to us (when leaving our apartment). Physical barriers, shields and screens, masks, latex gloves, plastic sheets hanging down from the ceiling, indications of distance – our untrustworthi- ness towards the presumed intangible virus makes us protect and isolate ourselves by all available means. We do not only isolate ourselves socially, we also isolate ourselves from bacteria as much as we can, eliminating the interspecies communi- cation. The fear of the virus comes along with fear of everything intangible.

Kitchenbath is a space in which the kitchen and the bathroom fuse in one shared environment that allows for cohabitation with good bacteria. It creates a connection between hygiene practices connected both to our bodies and to the traditional food production practices.

There are several touchpoints with bacteria within our household – the kitchen where dairy is produced and the bathroom are both seen as spaces aimed at eliminating bacteria. In a time when the relationship with the bacterial environments is endangered, we want to promote spaces shared with bacteria both in food and in body culture that have always been present in traditional practices. Stainless steel and ceramic surfaces and tools that are meant to be chemically cleaned to remain intact need to be replaced with environments that allow good bacteria to thrive.

The project metaphorically speaks about the constantly evolving hygiene regula- tions in food production that result in loss of traditional crafts connected to it. The cooper’s craft is dependent on traditional practices connected to both personal hygiene and food preservation – due to new hygiene regulations that prohibit use of such tools in industrial food production and the changing attitude towards the body culture, the craft does not any longer have a recipient. The project creates a new space for the crafts such as coppery or cheesemaking to develop to be in- tegrated in a personal household. Kitchenbath is focusing on cheesemaking, as whey as well as the presence of lactic acid bacteria that are very healthy for our bodies and lactic acid bacteria the most well known and associated species related to food safety.